Cult (FiD)

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A cult has a religious agenda and fights over the souls of a population. This can involve reforming an existing church, introduce a new faith, create a secret cult that acts in the shadows.

An adaptation of the cult crew playbook from Blades in the Dark.

Claims

Ancient Altar: You get +1d to the engagement roll for occult plans. Its blessing is with you.	Ancient Gate: Safe passage in the deathlands. When you leave the city through this gate, the spirits of the deathlands will not molest you unless directly provoked.	Ancient Obelisk: -1 stress cost for all arcane powers and rituals. This effect applies to all cultists, everywhere—so long as the deity is well pleased. You don't have to be on-site at the obelisk to benefit from its power.	Ancient Tower: You get +1d to Consort with arcane entities on-site. This tower was prepared by sorcery from the pre-cataclysm and acts as an arcane lens to focus eldritch energy across the black mirror into the void.	Cloister: Your Adept cohorts get +1 scale. More room for hopeful novices desperate to pledge their service.
Offertory: You get +2 coin in your payoff for scores that involve occult operations. The frightened locals offer you tribute when you perform your dark practices. They don't want to be next.	Sanctuary: +1d to Command and Sway rolls on-site. Your sanctuary maintains its effect as long as your deity is well-pleased with your service.	Spirit Well: You get +1d to Attune rolls on-site. A spirit well draws ghosts and other things to its power, which you harness to aid your arts.	Sacred Nexus: You get +1d to healing treatment rolls. Ancient arcane energy seeps into the wounded here, speeding their recovery, and marking them consecrated by its power.	Vice Den: Any time during downtime, roll dice equal to your Tier. You earn coin equal to the highest result, minus your heat.

Heat & Wanted Level

☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ | ☐☐☐☐

Coin

☐☐☐☐ | Vault ☐☐☐☐ | Vault 2 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

Special Abilities

1. Chosen: Each PC may add +1 action rating to Attune, Study, or Sway (up to a max rating of 3).
2. Anointed: You gain +1d to resistance rolls against supernatural threats. You get +1d to healing rolls when you have supernatural harm.
3. Bound in Darkness: You may use teamwork maneuvers with any cult member, regardless of the distance separating you. By taking 1 stress, your whispered message is heard by every cultist.
4. Conviction: Each PC gains an additional vice: Worship. When you indulge this vice and bring a pleasing sacrifice, you don't overindulge if you clear excess stress. In addition, your deity will assist any one action roll you make—from now until you indulge this vice again.
5. Glory Incarnate: Your deity sometimes manifests in the physical world. This can be a great boon, but the priorities and values of a god are not those of mortals. You have been warned.
6. Sealed in Blood: Each human sacrifice yields -3 stress cost for any ritual you perform.
7. Zealotry: Your cohorts have abandoned their reason to devote themselves to the cult. They will undertake any service, no matter how dangerous or strange. They gain +1d to rolls when they act against enemies of the faith.

Crew XP

At the end of each session, for each item below, mark 1 xp (or instead mark 2xp if that item occurred multiple times).

1. Advance the agenda of your deity or embody its precepts in action.
2. Contend with challenges above your current station.
3. Bolster your crew's reputation or develop a new one.
4. Express the goals, drives, inner conflict, or essential nature of the crew.

Contacts

1. Gagan, an academic
2. Adikin, an occultist
3. Hutchins, an antiquarian
4. Moriya, a spirit trafficker
5. Mateas Kline, a noble
6. Bennett, an astronomer

Crew Upgrades

☐ Cult Rigging (You get 2 free load worth of document or implement items) ☐ Ritual Sanctum in Lair (Counts as a sacred and arcane workshop for occult practices and rituals) ☐ Elite Adepts ☐ Elite Thugs ☐-☐-☐ Ordained (Each PC gets +1 trauma box)

Lair ☐ ☐ Ritual Sanctum ☐ ☐ Hidden ☐ Quarters ☐ Secure ☐ ☐ Vault ☐ Workshop

Training ☐ Insight ☐ Prowess ☐ Resolve ☐ Personal ☐-☐-☐-☐ Mastery

Quality ☐ Documents ☐ Implements ☐ Supplies ☐ Tools ☐ Weapons

Cohort upgrade costs

New Cohort: ☐-☐

Add Type: ☐-☐

Cohorts

Adepts

Quality ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ Weak ☐, Impaired ☐, Broken ☐, Armor ☐

Thugs

Quality ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ Weak ☐, Impaired ☐, Broken ☐, Armor ☐

Opportunities

1. A student at Doskvol Academy publishes a treatise claiming your god is a corrupted translation of an even more ancient god.
2. It has become trendy for young people of high society to pretend to swoon and have visions, but not all of them are pretense.
3. Construction work has accidentally unearthed an ancient spirit well, and awakened the entities trapped there since the cataclysm.
4. A rival cult's secret regalia have some connection with the Immortal Emperor: are they his agents or is it mere coincidence?
5. A noble performed a desperate ritual seeking assistance from your god. You have been chosen as the instrument of its aid.
6. A prominent collector of artifacts chokes to death in the streets, vomiting blackened blood and gasping the name of your god.
7. A rival cult is destroying any and all artifacts and sites sacred to other gods. They seem to have some arcane means of discovery. You may be next.
8. The murder of a noble has signs and sigils of your god left at the crime scene.
9. Local citizens in the area around your lair have started working together at odd times, in a trance, constructing something alien out of strange debris.
10. A trio of formidable ghosts arrive at your lair and announce themselves as the true ancient masters of your cult.
11. The anointed champion of a rival cult challenges your chosen one to deadly combat.
12. The Spirit Wardens intend to revive an ancient barbarism and burn a “witch” in the public square. Your god forbids this to occur, now or ever.
13. A moldy tome has been recovered from the bag of a Tycherosi vagrant: it contradicts some vital tenet of your cult's doctrine.
14. A wealthy cult offers you riches (coin, claim, cohort, etc.) to abandon your faith and enter into their congregation.
15. A leviathan hunter ship returns to port, devoid of crew or any items save one thing: a huge pyramid of alien metal, thrumming with the secret name of your god.
16. A gang of thugs is having serious mystical problems from a rival group. They hire you to put an end to it.
17. Blessed coins placed in the mouths of the faithful dead allow ghosts to return even after the Spirit Wardens have seen to them. Who is doing this? How?
18. Your altars crumble, your artifacts crack. Demonstrate your true faith, or despair.